pilotdave

A pilot can violate some FARs (as necessary) in an emergency (don't really need to "declare" it...might not have a working radio). But that doesn't give the pilot a right to trespass. Sure, he's not gonna worry about some farmer suing him for destroying crops when he makes an emergency landing, but there's nothing stopping the farmer from suing him. But that's nothing compared to japan, where the act of crashing a plane into a farmers field in an emergency is probably a crime. An emergency doesn't give a pilot free reign to do whatever he wants of course. There's still the catch-all reckless flying FAR, and some airspace restrictions that can't be violated no matter what (ie. you'll get show down if you try to land on the whitehouse lawn, even after an engine failure and it's the most convenient big open area around). Dave

You're such a good boyfriend. Dave

12,500 lb. Twin Otters barely make it... CASA's require 2. Dave

I like the idea... I actually implemented the same idea on my skydivingmovies.com test site (to show the filename in the url instead of just the file ID), but decided it just made URLs needlessly long and might cause some link problems, especially in email. I think a previous version of these forums did have that feature... I have seen referrer pages to my site from here in a different format, that includes the thread title in some way. Sangiro? Edit: here's an example: http://www.dropzone.com/forum/General_C4/Talk_Back_F1/new_videos_on_skydivingmovies.com_P350313/ Edit2: Hmmm... still works. Here's this thread: http://www.dropzone.com/forum/Dropzone.com_C2/Suggestions_and_Feedback_F3/More_descriptive_link_URLs_P1481079/ Dave

I asked Bill at the PIA if he'd upload some of those videos to my site. The skyhook videos definitely prove his point that the skyhook places the reserve where the main used to be, not into the relative wind. And some of those other videos (reserve bridle not extracting the reserve, secondary reserve PC causing problems, etc) were pretty educational. Hopefully he can find a way to get them out there. Here's one skyhook equipped intentional cutaway, but it's not as good as Bill's videos: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=1669. Dave

A friend ended up with a couple rather large bugs on his back, with many, many legs. Florida is nice and all, but they need to do something about the mutant alien bugs. Dave

You'll save $1 or $2 at the Motel 6, which is much newer and very clean, but you'll have a slightly longer walk (~5 mins or less depending how long you need to wait at the cross walk). The Motel 6 also has a pool. I was shown the "Airspeed shortcut" between the motel 6 and the tunnel last month... but I'd rather take the long way. Dave

The movie kinda sucks... just has the one great scene. http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=category&id=15&sortby=nameasc. Dave

Tomb Raider 2 wingsuit scene: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=64 Dave

In windows media player, you need to shut off video overlays before you can take a screenshot. I don't have it open, but its in the options somewhere... maybe under performace, then hit advanced (or maybe "hardware") I think. I have an older version at work that looks totally different. It can be done in quicktime too. I don't know exactly how it works, but video overlays allows your video card to process and display the video separately from your computer's processor. So windows just gives it a blank spot on the screen to put it. Dave

Here's the price list they were giving out at the PIA symposium. Dave

Avsim.com has a skyvan. It has no virtual cockpit though. Sign up for avsim.com and flightsim.com and you can find pretty much anything that exists for fs2004. Also hovercontrol.com for helicopters. Dave

Largest SINGLE ENGINE biplane. There have been many larger biplanes. Biggest ever is apparently the skyvan's great grandpappy, the Short S-14, a 70,000 lb, 6-engine flying boat. Dave

Did you ask nicely and say please? I use the program crazyivan mentioned when I need to reduce the size of a bunch of files. Never found an easier way. Dave

Your monitor has a maximum resolution. The pixels are a finite size. Digital cameras can take pictures far too big to display on a computer monitor (without "zooming out" and losing resolution). My home computer runs at 1280x1024. Nowhere near the resolution of a 4 or 5 megapixel digital camera. And now there are 10+ megapixel cameras available. Dunno what the future of computer screens is, but the current ability to take and store crystal clear pictures is far beyond the capability to display them on a screen. Pixels on computer screens have gotten smaller over time and will continue to get smaller... but I think it's gonna take a big leap in technology to come anywhere near catching up with digital cameras. Dave

I've added a new feature to skydivingmovies.com. I'm still working on it, but it seems to work pretty well so far. When you do a search, it'll suggest some other search terms that are close to what you searched for. I see a LOT of people making spelling mistakes on searches, so they come up with nothing. This should alert you to many spelling mistakes. It'll also help when your search doesn't exactly match what's in the database. For example, a search for "mr. bill" will not find any video with "mr bill" (no period) in the description. But now if you search with the period, it'll suggest mr bill without the period, and a few other ideas. The most likely search term will be listed first, in bold. If none are in bold, chances are the term you searched for is the best. It still needs some work... it makes suggestions every time you search, which isn't always necessary. And the suggestions are sometimes pretty far off. But hopefully this'll help people find the videos they're looking for. Let me know how it works for you, or if you have any ideas on how to improve this feature or the rest of the site! Dave

Get the card that comes with the cypres2. It has a much better x-ray picture on it. The picture on my old card looks absolutely nothing like what a screener would actually see. Then again, I don't think the card will do you much good. Either the screener knows what he's looking at or he doesn't. He's not gonna care much about what you say that bomb-looking thing in your funny looking backpack is. Dave

Are those not the very reasons you chose to buy a wings? Dave

The sooner you learn it, the easier it'll be to change. Watch someone with 1000 boxman jumps get in a wind tunnel and try the mantis. Then watch someone with 20 jumps do the same thing. The guy with 20 jumps will pick it right up, but the guy with 1000 will struggle for a long time and constantly revert back to the boxman. I wish I'd learned it right off AFF. Dave

My favorite off landing was in a field right near our DZ. I realized early that there was no way I was making it back, so I found an alternative field. It was very narrow, but pretty long and pointed into the wind (which was pretty strong). At 1000 feet, I made my decision to turn around and go for the alternate. On final, I noticed some people at the far end of the field. When I got really low, I realized I had a huge crowd of kids running right toward me. Luckily I touched down before they got too close. They surrounded me and actually applauded. One just kept yelling out "you're cool!" And I heard a lot of comments about my general awesomeness. They asked a few questions, and I showed them a little bit about how the parachute works, etc. Finally a woman came over and offered me a ride back to the DZ. As we were walking to her car, I asked what was going on. "Tractor races" she said. I wasn't quite sure what that meant until we were pulling out of the parking space and I saw a few guys on lawn mowers driving by, and then I saw the race course in a field. Who woulda thunk there was lawnmower racing right next to the DZ. I'm still a little frightened by it. Dave

Matt made the necessary changes, so the problem should be fixed. Let me know if you find any more files that don't download properly. Dave

BTW, a while back I had rewritten the entire download script which fixed all these problems, including putting the proper filename in when you right click to save a file. A few hours later the server crashed. Turned out my new script was writing the entire contents of every downloaded file to the server's memory until each download finished. With multiple large file downloads, the server ran out of memory and crashed. So I quickly reverted back to the old script which works fine in IE but sucks in firefox, which I use. I'm still trying to find a better way to send files out. Dave

Thanks. Matt just got wmv files working properly again (problem started when the server got a new hard drive a couple months ago), but I forgot about mp4 files. I bet ASF files are a problem too, along with a few other odd types. I'll let him know. It's easy to fix, but I don't have access to the files that need to be edited. But yeah, for the short term, I suggest either saving the file by copying the filename, right click, save link as, paste the filename. Or install an "open link in IE" extension in firefox which will open the file in windows media player and stream it. It can be found on the major extension sites. Dave

Silence is free AND wonderful. Dave

That's Andy Farrington in the Ronald McDonald suit. You can see him in action in http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=1720. Dave